Outlit

Outlit joins product activity, conversations, billing, support, CRM, and web signals into customer profiles, timelines, facts, and source evidence for agents.

When to Use Outlit

Use Outlit when the user needs real customer context for onboarding, adoption, retention, renewal, or expansion. Typical jobs include:

• Find accounts with declining activity, renewal risk, expansion demand, or stalled onboarding.
• Explain what changed for a customer and trace the answer to facts, events, conversations, or source records.
• Prepare account research, customer-success follow-up, or custom analytics across customer data.
• Inspect or configure an Outlit workspace capability when the user explicitly asks.

Do not call Outlit for generic customer-success advice that does not need workspace data. Use the outlit-sdk skill instead when the user wants to instrument an application with tracking SDKs.

Choose the Interface

Use the highest-level interface already available:

1. If suitable outlit_* MCP or Pi tools are present, call them.
2. Otherwise, if the outlit CLI is installed, use it.
3. Otherwise, guide setup:
   • Coding agents: run outlit onboard --agent <agent> --json. Outside CI, it can start browser approval when no key is available, install this skill, validate access, and return next actions.
   • Skills only: run outlit setup --yes or outlit setup skills.
   • MCP clients: use the workspace URL from Settings > CLI & MCP and complete OAuth in the client. Do not hardcode a shared endpoint, bearer header, or API key into remote MCP configuration.

Quick Chooser

Tool availability depends on the MCP server or Pi tool policy. If a named tool is absent, use the CLI only where your policy permits, or ask the user to enable the appropriate toolset.

outlit customers grant also updates an existing collaborator's role; access commands are siblings of owner, not subcommands of it.

Customer-associated users belong to customer accounts. Workspace users are internal Outlit members used for ownership and access actions. Do not substitute one ID type for the other.

Use customer lookups before SQL. SQL is for aggregates, cohorts, joins, time-series checks, and custom reporting.

Working Rules

• Start with the highest-level tool that can answer the question.
• Gather evidence before drawing conclusions, and separate evidence from interpretation.
• Cite the evidence kind: customer, user, workspace user, relationship item, timeline event, fact, search result, source, Attention item, Feature usage, or SQL result.
• Say when data is sparse, stale, truncated, partial, or inconsistent and how that affects confidence.
• Request only the fields or include sections needed.
• Treat write operations as changes to the user's workspace. Assign owners, change access, configure integrations, reject merge suggestions, merge customer records, or mutate destinations, activation, settings, and Features only when the user explicitly asks.
• Do not treat integration ready status as proof that a sync or backfill finished or that customer data is current.
• When the user wants to share Outlit product feedback, use outlit_submit_feedback when available with body and optional area/context, or outlit feedback --body "..." --json. Feedback does not open a support ticket.

Facts, Search, Sources, and Timeline

• Use facts list to browse known structured intelligence for one account.
• Public factTypes filters accept CUSTOM, COMPANY_CHANGE, FUNDING_REVENUE, TECHNOLOGY, STRATEGY, COMPETITIVE, SENTIMENT, CHAMPION_RISK, EXPANSION, CHURN_RISK, TIMELINE, BUDGET, DECISION_MAKER, REQUIREMENTS, PRODUCT_USAGE, CONTACT_INFO, CONTACT_PREFERENCE, CONTACT_DEPARTURE, CONTACT_POSITION_CHANGE, and CONTACT_DISENGAGEMENT.
• Public factCategories filters accept MEMORY, RELATIONSHIP, and CUSTOM.
• Contact-transition facts are neutral, source-backed observations about a known contact:
  • CONTACT_DEPARTURE: the contact left or is leaving the customer's company. Exclude temporary leave, ordinary out-of-office notices, candidates, and people discussed as part of the customer's own business.
  • CONTACT_POSITION_CHANGE: the contact changed title, department, team, or professional responsibility at the customer's company. This is not an Outlit relationship-role change; use CONTACT_DEPARTURE if the person left the company.
  • CONTACT_DISENGAGEMENT: the contact explicitly stopped participating, organizing, responding, or owning the initiative. A single unanswered message, scheduling friction, or an out-of-office notice is insufficient. It remains extractable but does not currently wake Churn; current contact-transition Churn signals cover only confirmed departures and position changes.
• CHAMPION_RISK remains historical and readable, but new extraction uses the specific contact-transition types instead of inferring a broad relationship judgment.
• Do not request internal anomaly-detector types such as CORE_ACTION_DECAY, CADENCE_BREAK, QUIET_ACCOUNT, ACTIVATION_RATE_DROP, or FUNNEL_DROPOFF as public fact filters.
• Use facts get with a known fact ID for the canonical payload or best-effort evidence.
• Use search for a specific question or theme, including cross-customer questions. Search returns grouped source and fact artifacts, not raw vector chunks.
• Use sources list for deterministic enumeration of emails, calls, calendar events, support tickets, CRM opportunities, or Slack messages.
• Use sources get when another result points to a concrete source and you need the exact artifact.
• Use timeline when order, recency, or sequence matters.

Supported generic source types are EMAIL, CALL, CALENDAR_EVENT, SUPPORT_TICKET, OPPORTUNITY, and SLACK. CRM and CRM_OPPORTUNITY are accepted aliases for opportunity filters.

Identity and Customer Merges

When calls or other communications exist but product usage is absent, use outlit_get_customer_identity for bounded split-record diagnosis alongside source readiness and usage checks. Candidates and shared participants are leads, not permission to combine evidence or proof of one company. Empty or incomplete identity results do not establish inactivity.

Merging is dangerous and has no supported undo. Only execute when the user authorized it and the records are certainly the same customer. Similar names, related domains, shared participants, a suggested match, or parent/subsidiary relationships are insufficient. The merge command defaults to preview; execution requires explicit permission, the reviewed preview token, and a stable request ID. Any pair involving an INDIVIDUAL requires an eligible saved suggestion.

Read the identity and merge workflow before previewing, rejecting, executing, retrying, or tracking a merge. It includes the five tool contracts, CLI examples, and asynchronous status handling.

Outlit-owned Churn and Renewal agents receive only the identity diagnostic for their assigned customer. Outlit-owned agents, including the Slack assistant acting for an admin, cannot reject suggestions or execute merges. Do not switch to CLI, API keys, or another identity to bypass an agent's tool policy or permissions. Customer-controlled agents may use the public tools within their granted authority.

Authorization

Outlit API keys are independent workspace principals. They do not inherit their creator's human permissions or customer access. Key presets are Read only, Personal CLI, Full workspace access, and Custom. Browser onboarding issues a Personal CLI key with read access plus creator-bound integration setup; it does not grant general workspace integration administration.

Current read grants are:

• customer_intelligence:read
• workspace_members:read
• analytics:read
• activation:read
• workspace_settings:read

Current write or setup grants are:

• destinations:manage
• behavior_metrics:manage
• integrations:connect_own
• integrations:manage
• activation:manage
• workspace_settings:manage
• customer_access:manage
• customer_identity:review
• customer_identity:merge

Identity diagnostics, saved suggestions, merge previews, and merge status require customer_intelligence:read for API keys. Rejection requires customer_identity:review; execution requires customer_identity:merge. The merge grant is excluded from Full workspace access and default presets; an admin must explicitly select it in a Custom key. OAuth MCP inherits the user's current permissions and record access.

A valid key can still receive 403 when it lacks the required grant. Do not retry that failure. Ask a workspace admin to review the key under Settings > API Keys. Remote MCP OAuth uses the signed-in user's current workspace authorization instead of an Outlit API key.

SQL Rules

Call schema before writing SQL.

• Use public analytics views, not backend table names: activity, customers, users, revenue.
• Add explicit time filters to activity SQL.
• Use LIMIT.
• Divide money fields in cents by 100 for display.
• Inspect JSON or trait column shapes before filtering nested values.
• Keep SQL read-only.

For ClickHouse syntax and query patterns, read references/sql-reference.md.

CLI Setup

Install the CLI:

curl -fsSL https://outlit.ai/install.sh | bash
# Alternatives:
npm install -g @outlit/cli
brew install outlitai/tap/outlit

Credential resolution order is --api-key, OUTLIT_API_KEY, then stored credentials.

outlit onboard --agent <agent> --json
outlit auth login --browser --json
outlit auth status
outlit auth whoami
outlit doctor --json

Plain outlit auth login automatically selects browser approval in a noninteractive agent shell outside CI. CI requires a key. outlit setup --yes and outlit setup skills install skills but do not configure MCP clients or integrations.

If onboard is unavailable, run outlit upgrade, then use outlit setup <agent> or outlit setup skills.

CLI Output Behavior

• Interactive terminal: readable tables, spinners, and colors.
• Piped output, --json, CI, or TERM=dumb: JSON.
• Successful JSON is written to stdout. JSON errors are written to stderr with a nonzero exit status.

Agents should check the exit status and capture stderr instead of assuming every JSON payload is on stdout.

MCP Setup

Get the workspace URL from Settings > CLI & MCP:

https://mcp.outlit.ai/w/<workspace-slug>/mcp

Add that URL directly to the MCP client and complete OAuth. Verify the connection with one of the tools actually exposed by the client.

Pi and Tool Packages

pi install npm:@outlit/pi
export OUTLIT_API_KEY=ok_your_api_key
pi

@outlit/pi registers defaultToolNames unless a custom policy is supplied. SQL and the broader public catalog are not enabled by default. Use analyticalToolNames for the default reads plus SQL, or piToolNames for the Pi-supported public catalog only when the agent should receive those capabilities.

For custom TypeScript clients, @outlit/tools exports publicToolContracts, publicToolNames, consumerToolPolicies, defaultToolNames, analyticalToolNames, piToolNames, cliToolNames, allPublicToolNames, and sqlToolNames.

Integrations

Use setup to connect or repair a data source; use status to inspect readiness. The current CLI exposes two commands:

outlit integrations setup <provider>
outlit integrations status [provider]

Interactive setup negotiates capabilities first. It can securely prompt for a credential, open a validated browser handoff, or ask the user to confirm a CRM or Mixpanel mapping.

Do not ask the user to paste provider secrets into chat. Do not put secrets in model-visible tool calls, command arguments, logs, shell history, or process listings. When automation must supply provider configuration, have the user run the command in a trusted local terminal and send one strict JSON object through stdin:

printf '%s\n' '{"credentials":{"apiKey":"<provider-api-key>"}}' \
  | outlit integrations setup fireflies --config-stdin --json

Use --accept-recommended only to accept the exact CRM recommendation returned by the current setup response. Explicit mappings also go through --config-stdin.

JSON mode never prompts, opens a browser, or polls. It returns the setup result, including any handoff or required next step. status reports configuration readiness as not_connected, awaiting_auth, setup_required, ready, or requires_intervention. It does not expose setup-session or synchronization metadata.

Disconnect integrations through the Outlit web app. The CLI does not expose destructive integration removal.

Troubleshooting

• Missing API key: use outlit onboard --agent <agent> --json, outlit auth login, or set OUTLIT_API_KEY. CI requires a key.
• Valid key but 403: inspect the key's grants under Settings > API Keys.
• Setup issues: run outlit doctor --json and outlit integrations status [provider] --json.
• Stale CLI or missing current commands: run outlit upgrade.
• MCP auth issues: use the workspace URL and OAuth flow. Do not assume remote MCP requires an API key.
• Empty data: inspect integration readiness and data freshness before concluding that a customer has no activity. If communications and usage disagree, check identity coverage too.

Docs

Start with the documentation index, then read the relevant pages for your task. The Outlit docs cover the product, CLI, MCP, API, and Outlit SDKs.

Common Prompts

• "What changed for this customer this week?"
• "Who is paying but inactive for 30 days?"
• "Why does this account need attention?"
• "What pricing objections show up in conversations?"
• "Which Features are customers using before renewal?"